A network (e.g., a telecommunication network) may have a data plane that includes devices exchanging network traffic, and a control plane that controls how network traffic is routed in the data plane. Operations support systems (OSSs) in the control plane are computer systems used by telecommunications service providers to manage telecommunication networks, such as telephone networks. OSSs and data plane devices (referred to as Network Elements (NEs)) exchange messages to perform management functions, such as network inventory, service provisioning, network configuration and fault management, etc. For example, the messages may be based on Transaction Language 1 (TL1), which is a widely used management protocol in telecommunications. In particular, operations domains (e.g., surveillance, memory administration, and access and testing) define and use TL1 messages to accomplish specific functions between the OSSs and the NEs.
A message (e.g., TL1 message) may include a command, which is a directive to a computer program, in a receiving device of the message, to perform a specific task. The command that specifies a task to be performed in a network may be referred to as a network command. The message that includes the network command may be referred to as a network command message. Typically, the receiving device executes (or otherwise processes) the command immediately after receiving the message and also reports the associated response immediately. When the command is sent to a large number of receiving devices, problems may arise due to the timing difference (referred to as a command skew) with respect to when the command is received by any two receiving devices. For example, when a command is sent to more than 10 NEs in a telecommunication network, the command skew produces unreliable results of the command.
IEEE 1588 standards describe a hierarchical master-slave architecture for clock distribution. Under this architecture, a clock distribution system consists of one or more communication media (network segments) and one or more clocks. An ordinary clock is a device with a single network connection and is either the source (master) of or destination (slave) for a synchronization reference. A boundary clock is a device with multiple network connections and can accurately synchronize one network segment to another. A synchronization master is a device selected for each of the network segments in the system. The root timing reference is called the grandmaster. The grandmaster is a device that transmits synchronization information to the clocks residing on its network segment. The boundary clocks with a presence on that segment then relay accurate time to the other segments to which they are also connected. IEEE 1588-2008 introduces a transparent clock associated with network equipment used to convey PTP (precision timing protocol) messages. The transparent clock modifies PTP messages as they pass through the device. In particular, timestamps in the PTP messages are modified to correct for communication latency, which is time spent traversing the network equipment. This scheme improves distribution accuracy by compensating for delivery variability across the network.